Recently the public learned that these colorants (astaxanthin and
canthaxanthin) are being fed to farmed salmon in an effort to create the
more marketable pink flesh hue. Several law suits have been filed against
grocery chains and growers in an effort to force proper labeling of such
fish.

The PI says,

"Farmed fish, the suit says, would have gray flesh were it not for the
artificial additives,..."

That's pretty gross.

Here is a link to over 100 news articles, many about farm grown salmon and
the recent coloring controversy. Warning, reading too much about this topic
may cause unexpected pink hue to readers' skin.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=farm+salmon+color

Scott

""""""""""""""""""""""
" Scott Ray "
" Moxee, WA "
" scray at wolfenet.com "
""""""""""""""""""""""

-----Original Message-----
From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
[mailto:TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of Ian Paulsen
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 10:32 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: pink gulls


HI:
See below! Has anyone seen pink gulls around here?
One of the other Chatters today informed me that the color additive added
to
farmed shrimp (such as those in Ecuador), which also is known to pigment
Elegant Terns, is astaxanthin. [see: "Carotenoids produce flush in the
Elegant Tern plumage" (Hudon and Brush, 1990, Condor 92:798-801]. And, a
Seattle Post-Intelligencer article recently indicated that Ringed-bills
in
the Northwest are turning up pink; canthaxanthin and astaxanthin are used
to color farmed salmon in that area. This extremely interesting since it
implicates food coloring (at least in part) as causing the outbreak of
"pink-gull".

P.S. I also learned that >50% of the FrGu's appearing at Bear River NWR,
UT
are brightly pink this year too.


Ian Paulsen
Bainbridge Island, WA, USA
ipaulsen at krl.org
A.K.A.: "Birdbooker"
"Rallidae all the way"